


Chalk

by Beleriandings



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, distressing ominous kidfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Elric brothers, Strikhedonia - The pleasure of being able to say “to hell with it”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chalk

Ed’s hands were dusty white with chalk as he knelt in the space they had cleared in the centre of the room. He had already started drawing the transmutation circle, but Al hung back for a moment in the doorway, cradling the heavy book he had been carrying from their father’s old study upstairs. 

“Come on Al, this is it!” Ed’s voice was jubilant. “Help me draw the circle. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we’ll have Mom back, right?”

Al shuffled his feet anxiously against the floor, squeezing the book very hard as he glanced around the basement. Though they had been working for this for so long, their materials assembled and their calculations meticulously checked and rechecked, somehow now it came to it he felt strangely nervous. 

Maybe it was just this place, he thought. Al barely ever came down to the basement if he could avoid it; when he was younger he had been scared of it, and even after he had never liked the dim light, the strange suits of armour that loomed from the shadows in the corners of the room. He had always had the irrational idea that they were staring at him, following him with their blank eyes. 

 _Why did Dad keep those things around, anyway? Was he expecting a fight?_ To this he never had any answer, except that their father knew a lot of things about the world that Al could only dream of, and now he couldn’t ask, anyway. 

“Alphonse, come on! It’s nearly time!”

Ed’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. “Brother…” he mumbled, walking up to Ed’s half-drawn outline of where their transmutation circle would be, standing right on the edge of it. “Are you sure we should be doing this? I mean, all the books do say that this…” he gestured at the circle Ed was beginning to sketch the details of “…this is the ultimate taboo. Maybe we should wait…” he tailed off, not knowing how he was going to finish the sentence, as Ed turned to him, dropping his chalk. 

“…What?”

Al bit his lip. “Maybe we should… I don’t know. We should wait, read some more…”

Ed was frowning. “Haven’t we waited long enough?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“And if we read more books, they’d only say the same thing. They’d say _don’t do it, don’t use the circle drawn here, for illustration only, don’t try to cheat life and death_ …” Ed shook his head, and Al pretended not to see the glint of frustrated tears in his eyes, behind the golden fall of his hair. But as Al looked, his brother’s head came back up to meet his gaze. “Well, I say to hell with that! We’re obeying equivalent exchange…” he gestured at the large metal tray of materials they had gathered, weighing them out so precisely, “…so there’s nothing that can go wrong, right?”

“Yeah, but…” he knew that what Ed was saying made sense; he knew he had felt that same anger and grief himself. He was finding it harder and harder to articulate his doubts, those dark, formless, wordless fears at the edges of his mind. 

Ed was talking, the chalk snapping in two in his clenched fist. “There’s no _but_. The only reason they say not to try it is because no one else has ever succeeded. All those other alchemists are just bitter because they weren’t good enough, weren’t clever enough or skilled enough to bring someone back. But we are. I _know_ we are! We’ve wanted this for so long… haven’t we?”

“Yeah, of course!”

“We’ve studied, and trained, and got stronger. We’ve suffered enough already. Equivalent exchange, right? Now it means we get something back. It means we’ll get to see Mom, I know we will!”

“Well, I guess that’s right… but then why would the books say…”

“It _is_ right! And I say to hell with all the stuffy old alchemists who wrote the books.” Ed gripped Al’s hands in his own, his smile infectious. “We’ll be the ones _re_ writing them, after today!”

“…Yeah” said Al, in a small voice. Then he sighed, drawing himself up taller. “Right” he said louder, forcing his face into a smile. He took the chalk that Ed offered him, dropping to his knees to help draw out the circle before he had a chance to change his mind, forcing their mother’s face to the front of his mind. “Let’s do this then.”


End file.
